


a hundred vignettes

by caandleknight



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (Literally Everything), Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Ark AU, Delinquents, Disconnected, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, S1-S7 prompts, Smut, canon-divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25217167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caandleknight/pseuds/caandleknight
Summary: 100 prompts for Bellarke..:or:.“Day 1,827,” she says. “You didn’t come down, so I don’t know what happened, but-“At this point, it isn’t hope anymore. “Bellamy, I love you.” That right there—those words—are the reason she knows it’s all false hope.She wouldn’t say them if she thought there was any chance he was listening.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 15
Kudos: 59





	1. 001-041

**Author's Note:**

> 001\. to 041.
> 
> I’m hoping to finish the rest soon. :)

**_001._ ** **_Energy_ **

How? How is she still on her feet?

Things in medical have been spiralling, and Bellamy doesn’t think she’s gotten a wink in the last few days. She’s still standing. A slight waver in her hands. 

At least they aren’t covered in blood. 

He’s known her a month, but he’s seen more blood on her than smiles. He’s not supposed to be worrying about her, he knows, but she’s their only doctor. Grabbing a couple ration packs, he meanders his way to medical.

“Get some shuteye.” He tosses the pack at her. It hits her arm, falling onto the makeshift crate.

“I have to-“

“-O has it handled,” he says, and she purses her lips. Crossing her arms, Clarke lifts a brow.

“I don’t take orders from you.”

For a moment, shallow and sweet, he stares at her. He sighs. “I noticed.” 

**_  
002\. Fold_ **

“You’re doing it _wrong._ ”

“How exactly can I be folding socks _wrong?”_

“I don’t know! Just gimme- _Bellamy_.”

“Arms too short, Princess?”

_Smack._

“Ow!”

“One has to be inside-out, so that… stop pouting.”

“I’m not _pouting_. You hit me!”

**_003\. Scorch_ **

She can’t quite explain it. 

Just: when he looks at her, it _burns_. Right from when she met him: when he was the self-proclaimed king, when she hated him. Loathed him. 

Even then, his eyes were scorching, smouldering every time they landed on her. A normal, distinctive brown, melting like caramel all over her skin.

Ignore that last thought.

Oh fuck, and the first time he said Princess? He mocked her ‘bravery’, looking over at Murphy for a laugh. He towered her, stepping into her space, but it didn’t threaten her. It was hot and charged.

Her panties twisted, and she knows he felt it too, because his impossibly dark eyes, _darkened_.

(Finn saved her, in that moment. She was both relieved and incredibly disappointed.)

**_004._ ** **_Whistle_ **

_Fwoooth. Fwooooth._

“What are you doing?” Bellamy asks, frustration leaking into his tone.

Jasper, who sits near him at the fire, startles. Then, he says, “trying to whistle.” He fiddles his thumbs.

“Well, stop. Ow-“

Clarke smacks him lightly, right on the back of the head. “-leave him be.”

She glares at Bellamy, all sparks and ammunition, daring him to argue. He doesn’t, except (grinning):

“Can you stop hitting me? I’m getting ideas.”

He wants to say he made her flush, and he does a little bit, to be fair. Her eyes don’t leave his though.

**_005._ ** **_Trust_ **

Don’t ask her how it happened. She doesn’t know.

She trusts Bellamy Blake, right through his blackened, selfish soul. She trusts his eyes, and holds onto his hand. He’s her anchor and it’s intrinsically terrifying.

Equally thrilling. 

Sometimes, especially at the beginning, Clarke questioned her own sanity. Even so, she—many, many times—gave him the key to her padlock of plans.

But if someone, hypothetically, did ask her why, she does have a theory.

It was when he caught her, she thinks, because—just minutes before—she told him, “the only way the Ark is going to think I’m dead, is if I’m dead.” She threatened it: she was the domino ruining all his plans. If she was gone, every brick would fit perfectly.

But: he caught her, and he held her. Her life dangled from his fingertips.

His opportunity was there, and he hadn’t taken it. It was in that moment, that hellhole of ten-seconds, she realized, he wasn’t just a sociopath. He was still selfish, and still dishonourable. But there was _something:_ else, different, _human,_ something more reliable than anyone’s words or promises.

She saw it again with Atom.

(It wasn’t that he couldn’t _kill_. He killed three-hundred-twenty people, shot grounders to protect her, and mutilated Dax, one of their own.

It was that he couldn’t look them in the eye while he did it, not someone innocent. He didn’t look at Murphy when he kicked the crate beneath him. He was staring at her. He just _can’t_. 

She hopes that never has to change.)

She trusts him because he trusts her. He trusts her enough to fall apart beneath a tree with a dead boy at their feet. 

The Princess of Alpha, giving her faith to a janitor of Factory; or a girl, trusting a boy. A boy, trusting a girl.

A story told many times.

(It does change. He tells her of Sergeant Lovejoy, because he trusts her enough to do so.)

**_  
006\. First_ **

Their first time was… weird.

Bellamy didn’t know how to say it, truly. It wasn’t bad, nor was it a grand slam of peak performance. He lasted. She came. 

But he was so _nervous_. Almost shaking. 

He could tell Clarke was trying not to laugh at him; she failed. He laughed too. It’s not like he hasn’t done it before. He’s done it lots. 

He’s good at it. It was just her. 

It was happening with _her_ , this girl he was probably more than half in love with. She was confident, and in the knowledge she lacked, Clarke simply: _asked_. 

“Is this all right?” and, “how was that?”

“Fine- _good,"_ he gasped. She settled onto him with a whimper, curling her arms around his shoulders.

Bellamy mostly struggled with the concept of, _shit, this is happening,_ in his quarters at 3 a.m., two months before Praimfaya.

He hugged her to him, folding, moulding his soul around hers. Her hair bounces over his shoulder as she hugs into it.

Her breasts pressed into his chest as his large hands splayed over her back, nearly covering the milky surface.

He wanted to print his freckles across her skin. He kissed over the stretch marks on her breasts and the callouses on her palms.

“Bell-“ she choked on the word, “ _Bellamy._ ”

He did well, yes, but he _so_ could’ve done better.

After, she lays, head on his chest. Her hand curves over his heart. “Stop worrying,” she whispers. “It was _good._ ”

He laughs, because if there’s one thing he loves about Clarke, it’s her bluntness. She will not lie to make him feel better, (or lie to hurt him. She has never lied to him). It makes her compliments so much sweeter. Fuck, the world is ending: there’s no time to lie.

No time at all.

His smile slips off his face. This is it. If they fail, everyone dies, and it’ll be their fault. Her lips pull down, because she knows exactly what’s going through his head. She pokes the cleft in his chin softly. He shakes his head, rolling her over and pushing her hands above her. She arches into him.

“ _Good_?” he goads. She bites her lip.

“I mean, yeah.” Her eyes glint. “I mean: it wasn’t that _bad_.” She’s the best distraction he’s ever had the honour of fucking, kissing, loving.

(Their second time though. _Damn._ )

**_007._ ** **_Stare_ **

He’s very well aware of the fact that he looks at her too much.

His sister raises a brow at him once. Raven too. He’s not discreet, not at all. He’s shocked Clarke hasn’t noticed. 

It terrifies the shit out of him, the way his eyes instantly attach to her when she emerges from her tent. Bellamy doesn’t know what it means when he can meet her gaze from across a crowd and _immediately_ know what she’s thinking. 

Bellamy doesn’t like how much of his focus she steals by simply existing. 

“Are you all right?” Lincoln asks.

He stumbles, nearly dropping the cargo he was moving from the Rover. “Fine.”

It’s not his fault, okay? Her brows are pinched, and her mother is pecking at her toes. Kids need help and Lexa wants to discuss a treaty in a few days. She looks stressed and tired and-

Her eyes flick to his, and he looks away.

“Here,” Lincoln says. He opens his journal and tears out a page. “I believe Clarke enjoys art.” The grounder presents the parchment and charcoal.

And a smile, a lonely one. Lincoln so clearly wants a home, but one for everyone. 

For a moment, he considers turning Lincoln down, to preserve his nonexistent pride. Then, he looks at Clarke. She rubs her temple, verging on a meltdown. One that she’ll have alone, in her room. Clarke doesn’t break, not in front of anyone.

“She does.” 

**_008\. Thoughtless_ **

Touching her became such a thoughtless thing.

Not like, in a creepy way. In the way of a hand on her elbow, thumb on her wrist, palm to her shoulder, toes nudging hers.

Then, he feels her fingers on his spine, in the edges his hair. It’s become so natural. It’s become something he needs.

It calms him.

**_009\. Overflow_ **

His jaw drops. “You need me?”

She pauses for a moment. “Yes. I do. I need the guy-“ she gulps, “who wouldn’t let me pull that lever in Mount Weather by _myself_.”

It’s too much. Too soon, it’s not fair, or right. “You _left_ me!” He cares more than he should, falling apart at the sight of her. “You left _everyone._ ”

It’s much safer like that.

**_010\. Neglect_ **

Clarke knows she had a good life. A great one by Ark standards. She was fed and loved.

But: she was alone. No one talked to the Princess of the Ark, except maybe Wells.

Her parents were always considerably busy too. They loved her, she knows.

She’s never had someone pay attention, like he does. Bellamy puts all his care into things, into her. He notices when she’s tired, when she’s not eating.

“You okay?”

It’s such a simple question, but in a world where no one else will ask, her heart beats a little harder.

“No.”

His brows pinch, and he sits up a little straighter. (The moment the word escaped, it became his mission to make her okay.)

**_011\. Hushed_ **

“Shhh,” he whispers.

He presses Clarke against the wall of the Ark, thrusting up into her. Pants hanging from her calves, she groans into his shoulder. He hooks her knees on his elbows.

“I’m… _trying_.” He breathes a laugh into her lips.

He pistons: she gasps. “I know you are, Princess.”

**_012\. Swallow_ **

She wants to know how much it’ll take to swallow the lump in her throat. 

Bellamy and her made a pact of sorts: _together._ (She’s about to break that pact). Because Clarke can’t breath, can’t see, can’t ( _shouldn’t_ ) live. She looks at Jasper, and sees Maya. She looks at Bellamy and sees a bombing in TonDC—she bombed _his_ _sister_ to save him—and his body, hanging upside down as he choked a man to death. 

She’s choking now, as she kisses him goodbye. 

His eyes are hurt, and she knows what he’s thinking. He thinks, this is his fault, that she’s leaving because he failed, because he’s not enough to make her stay.

It’s better that way; he will let her rot and fester.

He’s wrong, of course, he’s (too much) precisely why she’s leaving. How can she stay here, happy and loved with Bellamy Blake after she massacred a people? After wasn’t strong enough to do it on her own? He had to carry her sin, because that’s what he’s done. No more.

Love is weakness. 

He loves too much. So she swallows the words she should really say, but the lumpy heaviness stays. 

“May we meet again.”

They have him: they’ll be fine. That’s good, because she’s never coming back.

**_013\. Cold_ **

He hates this weather, the way it numbs his fingers. His teeth chatter with every breath.

But Clarke loves it: “it’s pure,” she says one day as it slowly falls before them. The snow sways back and forth. Next to him, she holds out her hands. Flakes sprinkle in, melting into the creases. He gets it then. She doesn’t like the cold, or even the ice on her lashes. She doesn’t like how it stains her nose pink.   
  


She likes the first snowfall because humanity hasn’t tainted it yet.

**_014._ _Question_**

“Can I ask you something?” 

Spencer pokes his knee. Bellamy looks up from his flower crown to grin at the little girl. She has the most piercing brown eyes he’s ever seen.

“Sure.” He holds up a lily.

Distracted, she pushes her red hair back from her face with the flower. The dust bounces off her large shirt as she pats it.

Her lips pull up, childish and sweet.

“Oh, right!” Spencer laughs. “Is that for your _girlfriend_?” Her stubby finger pokes his purple and blue-petalled crown. 

He raises a brow. Kids amuse him. “What?” Then, he pauses his stem threading. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Oh.” She pouts. “I thought crowns were for princesses.” His hands freeze.

Well, yeah, they are, but Clarke isn’t his _girlfriend._ Is this crown a boyfriend-y thing to do? The idea thrills him but also sets off a chain of rejection scenarios in his mind. 

Oh shit, making a girl a crown is such an “ _I-like-you-a-lot-let’s-date,_ ” kind of gesture. Spencer stares at him a little knowingly. She’s too smart to be six. 

“...it’s for me.”

Her giggles have a snort or two in them, and Bellamy hopes she never changes.

“Bellamy the princess!”

**_015\. Furniture_**

****

Back on the Ark, he didn’t have much. A table, a carpet, a bed and a sister. 

Here on the ground, he doesn’t have anything. He has the jacket on his back. He has a couch in the Chancellor’s office. 

Sleep and worry. It’s all he does on those cushions.

Technically, he does have a bed—he has furs as a makeshift mattress—but then, Clarke would be here, all by herself. 

They both know what being alone is like.

**_016._ ** **_Lean_ **

Their people, their problems, the grounders: they all ( _all_ ) lean on her. 

She leans on him.

**_017\. Rough_ **

His hand pounds into the grate. Bruising, aching, and again, and again. It clangs and it’s cold.

_Snap._

“Fuck.” It doesn’t stop him: his exertion plows through from his shoulder to his wrist. Fuck this. Fuck Azgeda. Fuck Clarke for _leaving._

(Fuck himself for still caring.)

She’s in front of him then, dirt stained as she gives a small, sad smile, quivering in blood. Her tiny fingers curl around his hand, cradling his shattered knuckles in her own two palms. 

His bloodied, battered soul is in her judgement yet again.

In his life, all he’s felt is fight, and stress, like he’s been hiding and running all at once. Even from her, it’s been all fight, questioning his every decision. She’s like that with everything though. She also knows when to _stop,_ knows when it doesn’t matter. Winning isn’t Clarke priority.

Her hands are soft, _gentle._ Her heart beats with his, slowing it to a relaxing _thump._

(Judges verdict: guilty, and forgiven.)

**_  
018\. Misty_ **

She hates seeing him cry. 

Misty eyed and broken, claiming he’s a monster. He wears things he doesn’t need to. 

What she doesn’t expect: his voice in her head. “ _You’re a fighter. Get up and fight!”_

When she gasps awake, he’s there, cradling her chin in his fingers. Bellamy’s nearing tears as he tucks her into his shoulder.

She hates seeing him cry, and never has she heard his voice crack like it just did.

**_019\. Ocean_ **

She remembers when the ocean was filled with water, salty and blue.

Praimfaya came and went, and now she walks the earth, encumbered and crying. Alone. The water has dried as she takes crusted steps across the floor of the sea.

She knows it's weird, but she likes to pretend he’s here. It’s not hard. The sun has granted her many mirages. Many chances. 

He remembers looking down on Earth, when it was blue. Bellamy left it to burn up and dry out. He traces where the ocean used to be, following a traveller his mind conjured in its desperation.

He remembers when Clarke’s eyes were blue too.

**_020\. Free_ **

Everything in his life has always had a cost. Everything. 

Except maybe her: she gives, and gives. There is no charge, but he just wants to give her something back. He can’t. 

She won’t let him.

**_021\. Connection_ **

“ _Bellamy?”_

When he hears her voice again, something in him intrinsically snaps. It’s a drug, his first hit. 

He’ll be counting every minute now.

“Clarke,” he whispers into this tiny radio, horrifyingly small in tone. His voice cracks and Maya raises a brow. The three hours between each call seems to drag, and the three minutes of peace doesn’t last. See? Counting.

Every time he reads the walls: “ _Mount Weather Pre-school_ ,” he thinks of what she said.

“We’ll figure it out."

He finds comfort in that: right now, it’s (she’s) his only connection to what lies outside. Which is incredibly stupid and self-destructive, he thinks, considering, “it’s worth the risk.”

That was what she said. He pulls his cap down to cover his face: it doesn’t matter.

(Even so: thirty-nine minutes.)

**_022\. Abandon_ **

If there’s one thing she and Bellamy are good at, it’s leaving each other behind. 

(but they always come back to each other: again, again, _again_.)

**_023\. Rain_ **

The storm is unrelenting; it sprays through Arkadia with vicious intent. His socks stick to his skin. The water is clear: it doesn’t burn. 

“You seen Clarke?” Bellamy asks Roan. 

The man, crossing his arms, raises a brow. “No.” Somehow, the monosyllabic answer holds enough sass to fill the Ark’s air reserves.

“Fuck.” Bellamy shrugs his jacket; it’s fucking wet, and fucking cold. They’re lucky the rain isn’t acidic. “Gonna get herself killed,” he grumbles, slinging the rifle over his shoulder.

The rain may not be toxic but it’s still a downpour. 

His hair soaks through, running down his jacket. He doesn’t expect to see her right away, but—maybe thirty paces away—she sits in a puddle.

He stands behind her. She says, “do you ever wonder if it’s worth it?” He can barely hear her.

Rain pitter-patters around her, swallowing everything.

“Every day.” 

“And?”

“We have people relying on us.”

She turns, so quick, so fierce: “but the people relying on us keep dying,” he thinks he sees tears on her face, “and we’re still _here.”_

 _I don’t want to be here anymore,_ she means.

He sits down beside her, not quite touching, and he sets the in front of them. Soon, they won’t be able to enjoy this rain. They never did in the first place.

“We’re still here,” he repeats.

**_024\. Determination_ **

He has never met someone more determined than Clarke Griffin.

She isn’t the smartest, or the fastest, or the loudest, or even the kindest. But when she puts her mind to something, there is no stopping her.

At first, he was a speed bump in the way: then, he simply got out of the way. Now?

Now, he’ll follow her into hell.

**_025\. Hope_ **

It’s a concept she’s never put too much stock in. 

But: it’s all she has when it comes (to him) to them. She just has to believe that they made it. She has to have faith that she succeeded, and they’re alive on the ring.

Clarke has to, or: (well, the gun has been tempting recently), she knows they’ll come down, and it’s only five years. 

She’s so lonely. She’s talking to a ghost. 

He has yet to answer. Luckily, Clarke meets a kid, and they spend the next couple years together by their lonesome. Madi loves the stories of the Hundred, from two-headed deers, to rebellious janitors. 

Clarke liked the janitor too, and the Spacewalkers and the Commanders.

She’s 1,460 days into calling him; hope is all she has right now. Only 365 more. 

Eventually, she also tells Madi the horrors. Clarke will not raise this child on lies. Maybe the truth does lead to bad decisions, but she’s tired of lying. Everyone is entitled to a bad decision or two in their lives.

“I’m sure they made it, Clarke,” Madi comforts the night before the big day.

Clarke doesn’t sleep, but still, her dreams fill with his curly hair. His arms cradle her, holding her like she hasn’t been held in years.

He’s never held her like that, but she can see it so clearly. It feels like when they hug, but more. His lips are soft in her mind, but aggressive.

The Bellamy in her dreams kisses her like he’s fighting her.

“Today’s the day, Bellamy,” she says in the morning, radio clutched in her hands. They shake. “Day 1,826 since Praimfaya. I’ve missed you so much.” A pause. “All of you.” Sometimes, she’s afraid that he’s listening, but unable to respond. She never says anything too revealing.

The sun rises, and then, the sun sets. 

The day passes and she looks up, watching painfully as the Ring blips across the sky. They didn’t… they—okay, there are many possibilities: a) she failed. They’re dead, b) she succeeded. They’re dead, or c) she succeeded and they’re late.

“Day 1,827,” she whispers harshly the next morning, careful not to wake Madi. “You didn’t come down, so I don’t know what happened, but-“ she knows, in her heart, that it’s a). 

She can’t face Madi’s eyes. At this point, it isn’t hope anymore. “Bellamy, I love you.”

That right there—those words—are the reason she knows it’s all false hope. She wouldn’t say them if she thought there was any chance he was listening.

(False hope or not: her calls don’t cease.)

**_026\. Gratitude_ **

“Thank you.”

Clarke lifts her gaze to his. Her fingers knot the last of his stitches. Bellamy’s jaw tics. She’s very well aware that the words are a struggle for him.

“You don’t have to thank me,” she says, wiping her hands on her pants. “It’s my job.”

“Nobody thanks you.” He pulls his shirt over his head. 

She goes quiet, then: “You too.”

He looks at her, eyebrows quirking in shock, nodding his head minutely. This man does not know how to take a compliment. 

She finds it endearing in ways that she shouldn’t.

**_027\. Coffee_ **

It starts with a mug, placed in front of her by a handsome young man. Bellamy’s hair is bed-headed, and the steam rises challengingly.

“It’s coffee,” he says.

“Coffee?”

“You looked like you could use some.” She takes a sip. It burns her tongue bitterly.

**_028\. Beginning_ **

“Do you ever wish we could go back to the start?”

She asks him the question after they wake up from cryosleep. After watching Monty and Harper’s video logs. It’s quiet and regretful. 

“What?”

She rubs her bare elbows. “Like the dropship. Stop the wars before they started and-“

His eyes meet his for a moment. They flicker with something. She resists her desire to ask.

“Yes.” He rubs the side of his neck. “I wish I never took O to that dance. I wish I never broke that radio.” 

“I wish I never hurt you,” she says. He clearly isn’t shocked, but she wishes she could see more than his blank stare, just one more time. It’s the only wish that’s granted.

His eyes fill with warmth, and his lips tug down. “I wish I never left you behind.”

  
**_029\. Pain_ **

“Start with Bellamy Blake,” her mother says. Clarke can feel her throat closing.

When they pull him in, it’s even worse. Head to toe, he’s soaked in blood, and caked with dirt. Clarke sees a few bruises. He’s thrashing his arms. His chains clink. 

Jaha kicks him in the back of the knees. He collapses. Clarke can see the fear in his eyes.

He shakes his head. Small and undetectable to anyone who isn’t her: _don’t. I’ll be fine._

She shakes her head again, and again. “No, no- _Mom_. Please.”

Then, the noose falls between them. Oh god. No she _can’t_. Not again. His eyes panic and he subconsciously swallows.

(If they start with Bellamy Blake, she ends with Bellamy Blake.)

**_030\. Bliss_ **

Bellamy likes the early mornings. So early the sun hasn’t risen, in fact.

It’s not that he wakes up that early. Usually he isn’t sleeping by then. Neither him or Clarke ever really sleep. They pour over maps, and fix the minor things that no one will notice, (until, suddenly, things are falling down when they aren’t there).

But there’s a certain quietness. A special little calm. 

It’s a blissful feeling, especially when Clarke falls asleep over these maps and he has to carry her to her tent. The first time he did, her mother glared at him all the way.

“Clarke, I was thinking-“ It’s happened again.

He glances over at her, and she’s hunched over, face in her elbows. Clarke is anything but loud, even in sleep, but she whispers. The weirdest things.

He walks to her, picking her up. “Bedtime, Princess.”

She’s in his arms for only a second, when: 

“What are you doing?”

He stops, eyes meeting hers. “Taking you to bed.” He’s a little to tired to think about his accidental double entendre.

“It’s three in the morning.” She doesn’t attempt to move out of his hold: her arms tighten. “My mother will think, you and I are…” 

“Your mother already does.” She screws her lips.

“She’ll lecture and question me, just-“ she pauses. “Can I stay?”

**_031\. Prepare_ **

“You ready?” he asks.

“No.”

“Me either.”

“I mean, a political marriage can’t be _all_ bad.”

“It’s to each other.”

“Bellamy Griffin,” she goads.

“Clarke Blake."

“Griffin-Blake.”

“Blake-Griffin.”

“Let’s just keep our names,” she settles.

“We’re arguing three minutes before this stupid ceremony. God help us and this marriage.”

“We’re gonna kill each other.”

She walks off. And Bellamy is left to stare at the back of her head. He can see it on his gravestone. “Killed by Clarke Griffin,” doesn’t seem like the worst way to go.

**_  
032\. Adventure_ **

“I wonder what Europe’s like.” She looks out on the ocean. “Or Africa."

“Asia,” he adds. “ _Rome_.”

“That’s not a continent,” she says uselessly, well aware that he knows. “It would’ve been amazing to see.” Her arms cross as the wind blows in.

He glances at her in that way he always seems to, enthralled and ready to fall into whatever trap she’s set. Bellamy is not stupid: rather, he’s deceptively smart. Yet, he falls for the same tricks. 

“Maybe you will. One day.” Maybe she’s done tricking him.

“Maybe, _we_ will.” She decides, looking at him. “One day.”

**_033\. Wander_ **

“Are you lost?” Clarke is fifteen.

The girl, dark-haired, and blue-eyed turns her gaze on Clarke. “ _Yes,”_ she says. 

Clarke doesn’t question how someone can be lost on the Ark. “Where do you live?” She takes her hand.

“I don’t know.”

That sounds off, and wrong and this girl can’t be more than a year younger than Clarke herself. She’s about to ask, but then she sees the terror in the girls eyes.

“Well, who do you live with?”

Clarke is told: Aurora Blake, and so the Princess of the Ark drags her new friend to medbay to check files she shouldn’t have.

Section 17. 

“Hey, we’re gonna get you home,” she says. “I’m Clarke.”

For the first time in Clarke’s life, someone doesn’t recognize her immediately. 

“Octavia.” Then, for a moment she’s quiet. “Please, don’t tell anyone I was here.”

Clarke isn’t stupid. She saw the file. She knows that Aurora Blake has a son under her name, and therefore Octavia shouldn’t exist.

“I’m just walking a girl to her boyfriend’s.” 

They walk down Section 17’s corridor, and they stop in front of the door. Octavia looks around, slipping in the door, but before it shuts, she turns. “Thank you.”

Clarke smiles. “What were you doing out here anyway?”

Octavia grimaces: “I guess I wanted to see it.” She glances at the window.

Then, her eyes go wide. Panicked, Clarke follows her gaze.

It’s a man. He wears a cadet’s uniform, hand resting casually on his holster. His freckled face betrays nothing. He stares at Clarke a moment, before closing in and sliding in front of Clarke’s new friend.

“What do you want?” he says. The _brother_ , she realizes. 

“I- nothing.”

“ _What. Do. You. Want?”_ Clarke hears so much fear.

“I’m making sure your girlfriend made it home all right, Asshole.”

His eyes flicker. The man isn’t dumb: Clarke can tell, but he won’t question a miracle as his mind fills in the blanks. He bites his cheek. “Right. Thanks.” The door slams.

He thinks she’s dumb enough to believe Octavia is his girlfriend. It’s a common assumption that she’s stupid.

..

She sits in front of him in the cafeteria after scanning her ration card. An apple, some jerky and macaroni fills her plate.

He has chilli and bread on his.

His eyes lift to hers, flickering in recognition. No one else is at the table. He doesn’t have any friends, she realizes. Makes sense. Trust is not something he gives.

“I’m not stupid,” is all she says. “And I want nothing.” She hands him an apple, and her jerky.

She’s from Alpha. 

Her rations are intrinsically hold more calories and benefits: just _more._ He probably hasn’t had a full meal since he was a boy.

He looks at her quiet and wary. She changes her mind. “Actually, I want one thing.” She can tell he holds in the scoff. “To see her.”

His eyes widen.

“I don’t think that’s possible without drawing attention to us.”

“No-“

“You’re the Princess of the Ark.” Of course, he knows her. They all know her: she hates it. “Just leave us alone.”

He sounds bitter, and she doesn’t think she likes him very much.

..

**_+034. Escape_ **

Clarke does as she’s asked, but not quite. 

Every single day: she sits with him, and gives him a significant portion of her rations. Bellamy never says no, not once, because his pride isn’t worth a hungry sister.

He does glare though, for nearly half a year. She doesn’t really care.

She sketches during her lunch breaks. Today, she can’t find the inspiration. So she looks at him. He reads. “What is that about?”

“Trojan War,” he says. 

And it strikes; she sketches a horse, works on it over the next two breaks.

..

“Any foods she likes specifically?” Her ration card grants her a lot of unfair privileges. They both know it. 

He’s using her. She doesn’t care because he doesn’t matter to her. His sister does.

“She likes apples.”

..

She asks a risky question, folding her horse drawing. “Does she like history?”

He glances up. “No.”

“Oh.”

Her hands deflate. She had this gift idea and- “but,” he says, after looking at her a moment, “she likes when I tell her them, and she’d love that picture.”

Clarke knew he wasn’t stupid. He knew what she was doing.

It was a peace offering.

..

The next half a year is much friendlier.

Clarke begins looking forward to her breaks from her mother’s internship. She starts venting to Bellamy, who stops scoffing and starts mocking. It’s the best kind of mockery. 

Fond, maybe.

He becomes more comfortable with her, sharing tidbits of his life. His mother’s a seamstress. He never knew his father, and has a different one than O—as Clarke’s noticed he calls her—but he’s pretty sure he’s half-Asian. He got the scar on his lip when a kid in his class punched him and he split his lip.

Bellamy tells her these things gradually.

They become an escape to one another. A place to dump their burdens.

..

Her father is floated, and she has no idea why. 

He’s there. And he’s gone. She tells Wells, and then, Bellamy. He grabs her hand across the table, and it’s the first time she’s ever touched him. It leaves sparks in her stomach, and grants her reprieve from the ache in her chest. 

For a moment. His fingers scrape her knuckles.

Three months later, her mother breaks down at breakfast. Jake Griffin died for having information that wasn’t even true, as it turns out.

..

Bellamy doesn’t show up for lunch: once, twice, three times. 

It worries her. A lot. On the third day, she takes extra care sorting the bandages, staying late in medbay. That’s when the door opens and the janitor walks in.

His hair is struggling to stay tamed, dark and wild. 

His eyes are dark, not just in colour.

..

Escape is easy, when there are no longer consequences. 

They touch a lot after that day. It burns the same as the first. She goes to his room. On Section 17, because she can’t stand to look at her mother and she knows Bellamy is petrified of being alone. It’s not like she’s be risking Octavia’s safety anymore.

They escape in each other, sharing burdens becomes having sex, and sex turns into chess matches, and chess matches revolve back to burdens. It’s a cycle. She still doesn’t like him, and he is not her biggest fan, but she requested a transfer to the Skybox. She’s his access to his sister, and he’s her escape from her mother.

(She tells herself this, again and again.)

It’s a win-win.

**_+035. Calendar_ **

“What day is it?” 

Clarke hadn’t seen Octavia in two years before she started the rounds in the Skybox a week ago. She’s really grown into herself, terrifyingly beautiful. 

“October 3rd.” The sister lifts her shirt.

“I turned seventeen yesterday.”

“I know.” Octavia raises a brow as Clarke presses the stethoscope to her chest. “Deep breath- your brother told me.”

Clarke shifts the stethoscope, dropping a piece of paper in her lap. It’s crumpled, creased through the horse but the sentiment stands.

Octavia’s eyes flicker to it and back. “You still talked to him, after- you only knew me for an hour and you spent years dealing with his shit.”

“It wasn’t all bad.”

The sister wiggles her brows, dropping her shirt. “I’ve heard.” Slowly, Clarke packs away her gear; same time next week.

“Clarke, I’m gonna die in a year.”

A year. Clarke says nothing, because she knows how the Ark works and she’s only one girl.

..

Months pass and suddenly, it’s August.

“I’m building a case, for when she gets reviewed.” Bellamy looks up from the sock he’s sewing.

“She’s Factory,” he says, “and a waste of resources.”

“She’s a person.” Clarke starts. “They can’t just-“ his teeth grit.

He pricks himself in frustration. “They can-“ he says, “and they will. You know what happened to your dad, and he _mattered._ ”

She can tell by the anger in his eyes that he calculated those words. _Leave._ He wants her gone; she knows he does. He’s been dropping hints for weeks.

Bellamy’s going to kill himself. It’s her biggest thought. He might not, because she’s not in his head but she knows _him_. His sister is his life. He’s pushing Clarke away.

The words sting. They’re mean and cruel. 

Her mouth drops. 

She leaves, and she works on Octavia’s case, because she loves the Blake siblings. One, became both, and she hates herself for it.

**_+036. Deal_ **

“I love you, by the way,” she says to him on October 1st. His face has grown shaggy. It’s a desperate plea.

It’s not enough. He looks at her blank, like he knows she’s lying.

(Maybe, she isn’t quite lying. But she isn’t there yet. Right now. She’ll try anything.)

“Bellamy, you need help.” He shakes his head. And continues to mop the floor. He’s stopped talking to her. She follows him into the closet “Please. I know Octavia is-“

“Diana Sydney came to me with a deal in August.”

That’s not at all what she was expecting. “What?”

“She said if I plant a bomb on Unity Day, Octavia’s on the first dropship.”

Oh no, oh god no. The celebration is happening, right now. Octavia’s birthday is tomorrow. “Bellamy-“ 

His eyes are desperate, regretful and so sad and too dark. “I couldn’t do it. Octavia is gonna die because I’m a cowa-“

_Bang._

The Ark shutters and the lights flicker for a moment. They stumble. “No-“ he says. “No. That doesn’t make sense.”

..

Eight people die in the explosion. Bellamy was not responsible.

Instead, he and Clarke make a deal with Thelonius Jaha. Pardon Octavia Blake from the crime of being alive, and they’ll tell him who wants him dead.

It’s a risky move. The clock is ticking; they both know Diana is after the Exodus ship, but Bellamy refuses to tell.

Funny how he can’t plant a bomb, but he can let everyone die.

It fucking works. Octavia Blake is pardoned from her crimes. Diana Sydney, Commander Shumway, and Cuyler Ridley are floated.

..

**_+037. Ending_ **

Clarke wakes up in the dark. 

His compartment is so much better than her mother’s on Alpha. There is no window, but there’s also choice.

Bellamy is already up. She can hear him arguing with Octavia in the kitchen and- _shit._ How is she going to sneak out with his sister seeing.

First of all, where are her clothes?

“I’m _cooking._ Go fuck Clarke and leave me alone!” Well then. 

Clarke sits up, pulling Bellamy’s long sleeved t-shirt over her head. It’s her favourite of his, and it’s too small for him now.

She opens the door with determination, catching sight of the two siblings jabbing each other with forks and screaming. 

Now that Octavia can be loud, she hasn’t shut up.

Bellamy doesn’t mind.

When he sees her, his lips tug into a cute grin. Octavia jabs him with the fork. “Clarke! I hope you like starchcakes.” She motions to her pan.

She’s home here, in Section 17, where the water is always cold. Right next to Bellamy and Octavia Blake.

“They’re _pancakes,_ O.” Clarke laughs.

“Not how you make them.”

..

.

.

**_038\. Name_ **

“Where’d did Bellamy come from,” she asks when he tells her how he named Octavia.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs.

She rolls on top of him, fully clothed. “It’s a girl name,” she teases, nuzzling her nose into his neck.

He groans in faux annoyance. “Says _Clarke._ ” She presses her lips on his. “Adding an ‘e’ doesn’t change-“

“It was an _author’s_ name.” He leans back on the bed beneath her. “Arthur C. Clarke.”

“Why didn’t they just call you Arthur then?” Her eyes go wide in horror. He starts chuckling, beneath her. 

.

..

**_039\. Stand_ **

Her wrists are bound. Her mouth bleeds. The Mountain Men place her right next to Bellamy.

She’s down to her fraying underwear, being catalogued by a sickeningly cold woman in a lab coat.

“Stand,” she says, grating her pencil over her clipboard. Clarke is pulled to her feet. Bellamy curses.

Clarke has the feeling this woman thinks she’s better than them. 

She starts from left to right. There are only five of them. Clarke spares a thought for her people. How they will manage without him, or her. “Harvest. Harvest-“ she looks a large grounder up and down. “Cerberus.” Bellamy’s head shoots up, and Clarke boggles her mind for why the term is familiar.

Bellamy looks the woman right in the eyes. She hesitates. “Harvest.”

When she stops in front of Clarke, her eyes become calculating. She takes a lock of her muddy hair, and Bellamy tenses next to her. Clarke presses her heel to his ankle: _it’ll be okay._

“A… blonde.”

 _Shit._ Clarke realizes she hasn’t seen many, if _any_ among the grounder clans. The woman is not stupid. What if she figures out Clarke is from the Ark, and they bleed her dry. What if-? 

Bellamy lunges at the woman, screeching like a crazy man. A guard beats him down, and the woman, clearly shaken, adjusts her stained lab coat. In her steadiest voice, she says, “he’s Cerberus. She’s harvest.”

She takes off, and Clarke looks over to see Bellamy heaving grimly. 

They’re being separated. Great.

**_040\. Control_ **

Bellamy understands Lincoln a little better after going through the Cerberus program.

Everything he does, he sees, but he has no control.

He sees Octavia. His face meets the butt of her sword: she knocks him out. He wakes up in Camp Jaha, Clarke at his side, telling him to breathe. Immediate and unrelenting pains seizes him: _craving_. He wants the red.

Clarke’s hands run through his hair as he spasms. His arm flies out at her— _no_ , he thinks—but he realizes he’s chained.

..

.

**_041\. Nightmare_ **

As a girl, Clarke never remembered her dreams or nightmares. She’d awaken with this _feeling_ , sometimes lovely, sometimes suffocating.

Now, on Earth, she rarely sleeps.

It’s been a week on the ground. It took her six days to get blood on her hands, and now, all she sees is Atom and his burned face. His faltered breaths. His milky, blind eyes.

She can’t sleep tonight. 

Talking to Wells earlier helped, but he went on patrol. The fire flickers in front of her, down to glowing coals by now. The warmth is nice. The quiet.

“ _...Bellamy,”_ Clarke hears from three tents down. 

Well, _quiet_ is really a stretch. In a camp full of teens, they’re either drinking, fucking or sleeping.

She hears a few more moans from whoever Bellamy’s fucking, plus a couple from other tents too. Clarke doesn’t mind too much, at least someone’s letting off steam.

She prefers the _I-had-sex-last-night_ Bellamy to _the-world-can-burn_ Bellamy.

Minutes later, the girl slips out of his tent: Roma. Clarke gives a friendly wave, watching as Bree follows a second after. Clarke almost laughs. “You guys have fun?”

The girls glance at each other, grinning. “You should give him a spin Clarke,” Bree says, then softer, “seriously, you seem so stressed all the time.”

“I’d rather die,” Clarke says. Roma chuckles walking off. Bree gives another brief look of concern.

The hundred is a unit. A family, in a way. She never had a sibling, but if it’s anything like the desire she has to protect these kids, Clarke thinks she understands the Blakes a little better. Or at least, the eldest one. 

Atom flashes in Clarke’s head, and she sees Bellamy sitting across from her, torn and jaw set.

Sometimes, she wishes she just waited for him to do it: other times, she’s glad she didn’t put this feeling on him. Clarke honestly loathes the egotistical man, but there’s something to him. Something sad and puppy-like, not that she’s seen a dog. They’re known for their loyalty though. Their cuteness, (not that he’s cute: oh whatever, he’s—objectively—attractive, she concedes).

She never wants to hurt him or his sad eyes. Still, she knows he’s lying. About what: she doesn’t know.

Clarke doesn’t know much to be fair. She’s always had a skewed sense of altruism. People were inherently _good_ , she thought. People wouldn’t condemn other people, she thought.

Good people did good things. Bad people did bad things. It’s how she saw humanity.

She killed someone, but she thought she was good. He didn’t drop her, and she thought he didn’t have a conscience. Clarke has seen him with Charlotte. The kind way he helps her. Same with Nathanial, a thirteen year old: Bellamy gave the boy his rations. 

Whatever the hell we want. No rules! Fuck the Ark and the _thousands_ of people up there. He gives a boy his rations. It doesn’t sound like the same man.

Clarke hates grey areas.

..

As a boy, he had the worst nightmares, of the stupidest things. From killer clowns to Octavia being found.

The shitty thing is, when he jolted awake from a night terror, he could never get back to sleep.

Tonight is one of those nights. After Roma and Bree leave, he sleeps, dreaming of the Chancellor with a hole in his chest. He dreams of Atom with a hole in his neck. He wakes. And then, he stays awake.

Maybe he should relieve Sterling early, if he’s just going to lay here. Of Jaha Jr.

Nah, Sterling’s less annoying. Pestering isn’t in his repertoire: to be honest, the boy barely speaks.

Rising, Bellamy throws on a shirt and guard jacket. He slips out the tent, right into the line of sight of the Princess _._

She doesn’t smile at him, but she does nod. 

He should keep moving. It’s her eyes though. Tonight she looks sad. 

“You okay?”

She’s good at schooling how she feels, generally. Her eyes narrow at him, suspicious of his intent. Which is fair. Then, her features tighten in thought, as though assessing him.

“Yeah.”

He can relieve Sterling in a bit. “What are doing up, Princess?” The moniker should sound more mocking than how he just said it. Bellamy has to watch himself with her.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

His hands slide into his pockets. Briefly, he considers teasing her, but flirting has never really applied to this dynamic.

Whatever this “dynamic” is: she’s seen him at his weakest, with Atom, seen him when he cracks, and he’s strangely comfortable with that fact.

He kind of wants to sees what it looks like when she cracks. What makes her tick.

He doesn’t like the Princess. But he does trust her. More than O sometimes, (and that is truly terrifying). His conversations with Clarke are carefully one-worded, (generally). Unless they’re arguing.

“Nightmares?” He asks with a tone of mocking, well aware that he is a hypocrite.

“Yes.” His jaw tics. “And thinking.”

“About?”

For a moment, she glances at him, glowing in the coals of the fireplace. “You don’t make any sense.”

He clenches his hands. “What.” Monotone; dry.

She looks at him, amused: like he’s just proved her point. Maybe he did. He asked her if she’s okay, and then snapped at her when she answered honestly.

“You’re hiding something,” she says, stretching her legs. She rubs her wrist where the Ark-issue band once was. 

_Yeah, I shot the Chancellor. They’re gonna kill me._

“You were right,” she continues, “about me being privileged, and blind.” 

His heart aches a little at that. Bellamy never found joy in cruelty. He’s just selfish. There’s a difference. “Clarke…”

“I killed Atom.”

 _I killed the Chancellor._ He opens his mouth and closes it, because she isn’t wrong. He can’t show weakness, not around the one person in his way of control here.

He stands, suddenly, without a word.

He’s going to relieve Sterling, before he does something incredibly stupid, like offer her a shoulder to cry on.

But that’s when they hear the shouting.

_Wells Jaha is dead._

Bellamy looks over at Clarke and he needs to go right now. But she’s already gone.


	2. 42-101

_**042\. Jacket** _

"Day fifteen," she says into the radio. "I miss you guys." Clarke sighs, resisting the urge to scratch at her scabs.

Instead, she shrugs the leather on her shoulders. The Ark-standard guardsman jacket. "I found your jacket, Bellamy." She extends her arm, tips of her fingers barely peaking out the sleeve. "It's way too big on me, but it smells like you."

Sweat, blood, smoke, body odour and cinnamon, maybe a tinge of loyalty and protectiveness.

**_043\. Language_ **

" _Ai_ like Bellamy come _Skaikru_."

" _Sha?_ " Yeah? She teases. He frowns, crossing his arms. There is no steam behind his glare, and he holds back the grin.

"I'm trying."

_**044\. Binary** _

"A binary solar system." Bellamy looks out on the planets. The two suns.

"I'm tired."

Bellamy glances at Clarke, startled.

She looks back, saying, "what if we wait a bit, before waking them up?" He can feel himself nodding. "I need a break."

_**045\. Master** _

Echo is a master archer.

She tells him all these things about her. Nothing personal but Bellamy and Echo are very good at talking about absolutely nothing.

She promises to teach him, when they get back to the ground. Echo suggests he teach her how to use a rifle. He remembers a girl he can't say the name of without choking.

"Yeah." No.

_**046\. Storyteller** _

"Papa. Tell me a story," Aurora requests, stretching and yawning in his arms. Madi walks by them.

Bellamy looks down at his little girl as he steps. "Well, Rory," he ponders, "Zeus' smartest child-"

"-no!" The blonde child whines. "Of _Mama_." Her brown eyes tear up a little as her father walks into her room. Madi's door slams a little harshly.

Bellamy stills, swallowing. He puts her on her bed of furs, and pulls her mismatched socks off. Pink with blue-polka-dots.

"Once," he starts, "Mama was kidnapped by evil men with 47 of our people. Just like a princess."

"Did you save her, Pa?"

"I tried to- with Finn."

"You don't like Finn."

"I do so." Rory squeals like she's the funniest person ever. "No, she saved herself." He grins down at her, brushing her hair from her face like he used to with Clarke. "She fought, and she ran."

"Mama was brave."

"Or stupid." Rory gasps. He chuckles at his own joke. "Your mother had one of the most tactically sound minds I've ever seen."

"What does tac-tic-cally mean?"

"Strategy. Planning." Rory nods in understanding, laying back on her pillow. "You got it from her. It's why you're such a smarty at chess."

"Not even Madi can beat me!"

He ruffles her hair. "Competitive nature was all her too."

"Sure, Bellamy." He looks behind him to the wooden door. Madi leans against it, looking sad and wistful, nearly eighteen by now. "You're not competitive at all." She mocks him like Clarke would've.

"I miss Mama," Rory whispers, sleep nearly taking her. Bellamy feels his heart stutter. Jolt with _aching_.

"Me too, Baby."

_**047\. Shadow** _

"You have a shadow."

Clarke tilts her head over his shoulder, scrubbing her chapped hands. Bellamy looks to see Charlotte watching them intently. He holds in the soft smile begging to break his frown.

"I was helping her with her nightmares." He pushes his hands into the cool water. "She won't leave me alone."

She rolls her eyes. The fire that was there once simmering into a charcoaled heat. It makes him uncomfortable, and tingly in a way he's never felt. He tics his jaw, scraping at the blood under his fingernails.

"As if you want her to," she says. "You're very soft with the younger ones."

His eyes go wide, sleeves rolling down his forearms. The leather soaks and Bellamy knows when he lifts his arms,the water is going to drip into his elbows.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

Clarke's eyes flare at him, like that fire he is uncomfortable with, and he warms under the collar. "It's…" she pauses, and he can't resist as his head tilts, " _adorable_."

Bellamy scoffs. He is _not_ adorable.

_**048\. Unread** _

He's never been unreadable to her.

But when he comes down, a year and seven days too late, he's a different person. Different hair, different smile. He and Murphy are _friends_. He has a girlfriend, and he stays at least five feet from Clarke at all times. He used to breathe her breaths. They were so _close,_ once.

For the first time in her life, she can't look at him and just _know_. It hurts more than the prospect of five years without him.

_**049\. Sports** _

"'Rules for kickball.'" Clarke reads, leaning over the gym booklet. "Bellamy, check this out."

They had stumbled upon a high school, overrun with vines but it seemed like a good idea. He steps over what was surely a shiny floor once upon a time, to Clarke.

She grins down at the dusty paper. "It's like baseball, but with your feet."

Her description doesn't help. He doesn't know what baseball is.

His heart sinks, watching the hope and idea spawn in her eyes. _Clarke, we're at war. Clarke, focus. Clarke, you need a ball to play, and all these ones are popped. Clarke-_ her hand drags over the title, picking up dust.

"How do we play?"

_**050\. Judgement** _

"If you go to hell," he says, looking down on her, "I'm coming."

 _Following_. Clarke hears it. The night sky is dark, burning with the orange of the campfire. He continues, "if anyone deserves peace, it's you, Clarke Griffin. Goddamn _Wanheda_." This was not a conversation she meant to start, passively mentioning hell will be hot and she can't wait to get there: "you didn't ask to be the _Commander of fucking Death."_

"I let a bomb drop on TonDC. I committed genocide,"she says, "I _am_ the Commander of Death."

" _We_ committed genocide."

It makes her angry, the way he keeps saying that: _we_. "It was my choice," _it didn't break you like it broke me._

They did it together, but he didn't wear it like she wore it. He seemed more broken over her leaving than mass murder. Maybe, he's just good at hiding it.

He deflates at that, changing tactics. "I guess I'll meet you there."

The fire crackles and the sparks dance. His eyes reflect it. "You won't," she throws back. "You have a good heart." _A good heart is not a good person._ It's a quiet, deprived voice.

"I got three-hundred-twenty people killed out of fear." He kicked a log in the flame, relishing in the heat of it. "I slaughtered an army sent to protect our people out of grief."

Then, he finishes:

"Everything you've done was for _us_. It had nothing to do with how you felt." Everything he did was selfish.

"Not TonDC." He stares at her in confusion. She doesn't elaborate.

"After you left," he pauses, as though trying not to lose his balance on the words, "O told me how you almost got her killed so the Mountain Men wouldn't find me."

 _It was selfish._ She couldn't lose him too. No matter how many times she said 'love is weak'.

"You risked TonDC, my _sister_ , Lincoln, Kane, your _mother_ ," she stares at her feet, "for our people."

"No."

He looks startled. Orange glows off his freckles and she knows, _knows_ how stupid she is. "What?"

"I'll meet you in hell, Bellamy," she whispers, pulling her knees to her chest, "maybe we'll be cellmates."

The fire crackles.

_**051\. Gutless** _

"You gutless, fucking _coward_."

Her fists beat into him, again, and again. Now that she's lucid enough to realize he's not a hallucination, her anger pours out. Her radiation burns have pinked and scabbed. "I couldn't leave you behind."

"So you stayed to die with me?!"

 _Yea_. "We'll figure it out." They won't.

_**052\. Whiskey** _

Regardless of what he wants, his face scrunches at the taste of the whiskey. The night is dark: mildew stinks on his tongue.

Clarke holds up her cup, face void and hurt. He wants to ask about the crease in her brow. He knows the answer. "To Mount Weather," she says.

They clink glasses and he downs it, burning his throat. They do it together.

_**053\. Petal** _

Clarke wonders why the hell she's the only one left.

After everything, all her fights and sacrifices, the last member of the Ark alive, is her. _Her_. Not even Bellamy Blake could beat her in living.

Clarke Griffin doesn't lose.

He was taken by a stray bullet, jumping in front of her like the stupid, soul-driven man he was.

Now, she stands in front of his sad excuse for a grave: a three foot hole in the ground, shoddily covered by heavy mud she rolled him into. His dead eyes stared at her while she cried, pushing globby dirt on him. Withering flowers hang from her fingers, petals drifting to the mud.

(Not even the flowers outlive her.)

_**054\. Bunny** _

This guy is really grinding her nerves.

They were in the middle of a conversation when he grabbed a knife from their weapons table and stormed off.

"Hey!" she says, nearly tripping over a stick. His strides are long: her legs are short. "I was _talking to you."_

"Really, Princess." He pulls his shirt up to wipe his face. "Sounded more like a lecture."

"You hung Atom from a _tree_."

He looks at her, smouldering. She refuses to cower. "He went against my orders."

"Why follow orders when there are no rules?" She crosses her arms. Bellamy tenses.

"God, you're annoying," he says, wiping his hand over his face. "If you don't stop, I'll hang you from a tree."

"Try it, Caesar." Bellamy looks at her a little startled. Clarke rolls her eyes. "He was a dictat-"

He glares. "I know who Julius Caesar is."

Then, he turns his head sharply. Bellamy pulls his hand up to his ear, whipping the blade passed her. Clarke sees him wince at the squeal. "It's a bunny," she murmurs, wandering over to the game.

Bellamy pulls the blade from its neck, wiping it on the grass. He sighs. Almost _pained_. She refuses to acknowledge the humanity he shows.

"We're not done talking," she says.

"Are we ever?" She bites back the grin.

**_055\. Delicious_ **

"Have you always liked deer this much?" Madi asks.

Bellamy looks up at the kid and then at Clarke, breaking away from the meat he was devouring.

"No," he says, "but Monty's algae was absolute shit."

Clarke laughs. He loves the sound.

_**056\. Crosshairs** _

For six years and a week, Clarke has refined her markmanship.

She taught Madi, much the same way a certain man taught her. _Tighter against the shoulder. Balance your stance._ Clarke almost felt the ghost of his fingers on her back as she instructed her _strik natblida._

Now, they've moved onto the sniper rifle.

The principles are generally the same, but Clarke was self-taught with this one. She is not a great shot from more than a quarter kilometre away.

Madi puts her eye to the scope. " _Presh skrish." Holy shit._

"What is it?" Clarke lightly prods Madi aside, putting her eye on the scope. Right in the crosshairs, there is a man of average height. His hair is curled and his beard is patchy.

"Is that Bellamy?" Madi asks. "He looks like your sketches, but… _hairy_." Clarke feels the girl's chuckles.

"Yeah."

In disbelief, Clarke flicks the safety on the sniper, folding it up to sling it over her back. Madi takes off.

Clarke wants to follow, but her feet anchor to the dirt. _Six years and a week._

_**057\. Swell** _

The swell of her breasts draws him in. He wants to kiss and nip and bite. Her fingers clutch into his inky hair, guiding him over her body. The room is dark, and they are quiet on the bed.

His lips trail the sides of skin as it involuntarily breaks out in goosebumps. They both lay bare, his abs press into her core as he worships her.

He kisses the wrinkle beneath the hills of weight on her chest, and the pebble of her nipples. She pulls his lips to hers, clutching the back of his neck.

_**058\. Absurd** _

"You like my brother."

Octavia Blake plants herself in front of Clarke Griffin. Octavia understands social constructs more than she lets people in on. It's just _easier_ to not care.

"No."

Clarke keeps her eyes on the map in front of her. Bellamy's grabbing food. As soon as Octavia saw her chance, she dove for the interrogation.

"Uh. Yes."

"That's absurd."

Octavia lifts a brow. "He likes you." Her eyes shoot up, then harden.

"No, he doesn't." Clarke rubs her brows, letting out a breath.

"Hey, O." Bellamy slides in beside Clarke. She adjusts her body to his without thought. His head tilts at Clarke. "How's it coming?"

Her jaw grinds. Octavia can almost hear the working teeth.

"Fine," she says soft and strong. "The reaper tunnels are confusing."

"We'll figure it out." Their eyes meet and Clarke nods; he swallows, looking away.

Octavia says, "oh, he so _**does**_."

.

..

_**059\. Flawless** _

She was supposed to be flawless, as the Princess of the Ark.

Her hands had too much charcoal on them though. Her nails were too chewed. Abby Griffin did not seem pleased when Clarke had lead on her clothes.

When she got to the ground, the idea never bothered her. Less charcoal, more dirt, a couple callouses, a sliver and a few scrapes. Some blood too, wrapping up children and their twigs for bones.

She's far from flawless, but her hands are strong.

_**060\. Cigarette** _

His hands are destroyed.

It's something she wishes she never noticed. Freckled and scarred, more than half the time bleeding. Where her blood comes from life, his comes from the stomachs of their food, from his kills.

He chews his nails too. Clarke sees bothersome cigarette burns on the backs of his hands and on his wrist. Clarke is not a stupid girl. She is very well aware that, regardless of the oxygen warnings, people smoked.

She's heard it's a hard habit to kick.

What she never considered, or maybe intentionally ignored, is the idea that someone would take the glowing orange butt of a cigarette to skin.

She wants to ask.

She doesn't, not for a long time. But once, when they're locked in an old rusted car by acid fog, she almost does.

It starts with her finding the half empty pack of cigarettes, passively asking: "you smoke?" She sees him tuck his wrists and pull up his sleeves. "I don't," she adds nonchalantly.

Then, she puts them away, and they sit in uncomfortable silence as two people who don't know each other, don't like each other, and can't stay away.

_**061\. Vulnerable** _

She was supposed to be flawless. He wasn't supposed to share his stories.

This is them: until it isn't.

She doesn't leave medbay, for two days straight, and so, marching his way across Arkadia, he forces her to. He makes her eat, and lectures her.

_Take care of yourself._

Then, she kisses him, and a moment later he kisses back. It leads to his quarters, and not beyond. They continue to kiss. His lips are warm. His fingers tickle beneath her clothes but never reach.

In the dark, a flawed girl, fully clothed, sits on a boy who tells stories of Greek heroes and Egyptian Queens. Briefly, she wonders if he's ever shared a word about himself.

He never has. Her fingers catch a scar on his hand and she asks:

"Who did this to you?" She raises his dark hand to her chin, lips on knuckle.

"His name was Grus."

She sneers. "Ugly name." _Ugly man._ She is unaware of his appearance, but she can picture the sadistic grin on broken teeth.

Just like that night under the tree, it spills.

"My mom exchanged sex for warnings on inspections." She presses her lips between his brows. "He came around a lot, and I did some cleaning for him." He sniffs, trying to hide his bubbling anger. She sees it, inviting it into her arms. _He burned me._

And so, in her flawed hands, a boy tell his story. Neither are who they were supposed to be.

Neither care.

..

.

_**062\. Unique** _

There's nothing unique about their time on earth.

There are wars, and death, laughing around campfires and sex under the stars. All these things have been done a million times.

None of these things had happened for them before touching the earth and her soil. These are the things they heard about. The ice and snow, the oranging leaves.

The death, and the war, too.

Bellamy Blake kisses Clarke Griffin. It tastes like blood, and blood tastes better on Earth.

No one cares to remember it.

_**063\. Name** _

"How about Aurora?"

Bellamy looks up from his daughter. His heart warms at the sight. Their girl is a few days old and yet to be named.

"You wanna name our kid after dead people."

"You named your sister Octavia."

"Yeah." He screws his face jokingly.

"It's a beautiful name," she says. "I didn't know your mother, Bellamy. It was just an idea." Her tone is kind and suggestive.

He wants to. It's just… hard, naming someone. It's a label, constrained to their life. His was Bellamy, and it was feminine. Boys used to tease him for it, but he thought it was cool. The girls were quite fond of it too. It was an author's name. So was Clarke. It's masculine. Then again, names don't define a person.

He loves the name Aurora, but what if he looks at her, and is constantly reminded of his mom? What if he is a horrible father? He's mean, and violent, and angry-

"Stop that," she says. "I like Rory as a nickname." Even her suggestions are said with confidence.

Rory: with her mom's sunbeams of hair that curls like his. Her eyes are brown and freckles paint her dark cheeks. She has a dent in her chin.

She's going to tear the world from its roots if she's anything like her parents.

_**064\. Squabble** _

They squabble like children with knives. That's what Raven thinks.

Her head aches from the crash still, and Shooter over here broke her radio. Clarke seems to dislike him greatly. Bellamy kidnapped and drowned her radio, and he seems content with the fact.

Then, three-hundred-twenty people are on the line.

_You're not a murderer, Bellamy._

She calls him by his name like someone begs a deity, yet he bends to her will. He helps find the radio, but ultimately, they fail.

He's like a child, insecure and selfish in his words.

"I _helped_." This fucking prick.

Then, Clarke's between them and Raven sees the immediate guilt flash in his eyes when he looks at her. His walls crack. His silver armour corrodes, rusting. "Now he has to live with it."

All this when he looks at her. Raven thinks he looks almost: _human_.

_**065\. Secure** _

"Let go."

He doesn't know how they got here. One minute, it was fine. The next, the earth fell beneath them and they're hanging over a grounder trap. Again. Except, his hand is on the edge, and hers are clasped around his other.

Sweat drips down his arm. "No," he says.

"It's been over an hour." Her voices trembles but doesn't stutter. His muscles tense. "No one's coming."

" _No_."

His grip is secure, but that drop of sweat is not the first. It slips between the crease of their clasped palms.

It's going to come to a point where he can't hold on anymore.

_**066\. Contemplate** _

It's the way his lip quirks in the corners. It has her contemplating whether or not to put their entire relationship on the line.

It's his arms, and the freckles trailing his spine to the two dimples between his hips. It's the way his shoulders roll.

It's the way he looks at her.

Heated and admiring, but also challenging and condescending. All in one pretty wrapping paper, is a man who trusts, cares for and doubts her every syllable, searching for the mistake. They both do it, trying to find the truly _right_ answer. It's never been about proving the other wrong. Sometimes, the two were synonymous.

So he looks at her, brown eyes blown, chest bronzing in the sun as spatters of freckles litter the skin. It's the way he makes her feel absolutely stunning, even when she's chin high in blood and death and sin.

It's him. It's her. It's the burn of it all and it has her contemplating risks she never should.

_**067\. Audacity** _

Her mother has the audacity to tell her who and who is not deserving of her love.

Bellamy Blake is the latter, according to Abby.

Clarke's never given any care to what people deserve. Second chances is who she is. Her mother should know that.

Her mother doesn't.

_**068\. Lousy** _

"You're a lousy shot."

It's her third lesson, and she's still no closer to the target. "This isn't really my thing," she says.

"Your thing is pissing on authority."

"Challenging." He shakes his head. She shoots. She misses. His shoulders rumble in laughter as he grabs her elbow and gently shifts her stance.

"Semantics," he says, and she raises a brow. Big word for a man who reduced himself to screaming at teens. She shoots. She misses. He laughs out loud.

Big laugh for a man who seems to never stop scowling.

_**069\. Embrace** _

She smells like copper. Like blood.

It never quite goes away. It's underlying and unconscious. When she throws herself into him, two orbiting planets finally collide. For a moment, small and sad, he doesn't trust it. Specifically, he doesn't trust: a) she's real, and b) she's hugging _him_.

Even though he stinks with mud, and festering in death, he holds her, swarms her in an all consuming embrace.

_**070\. Likely** _

"Not likely."

He scoffs when Raven asks halfway through month two if Clarke is ever planning on returning. Irritable as always, his attention has been splitting. He needs to spill his guts, but the Princess is the only one he's ever been comfortable doing that with.

_She needs time. She needs air. She needs space._

He needs _her_. (She's not here.)

"Wanna drink, Cowboy?" a nice woman asks, sliding her way in front of Bellamy and Raven at the gloomy bar. She grabs him a glass.

"This is Gina," Raven says.

(She's not _here_.) "Hey. I'm Bellamy."

_**071\. Pompous** _

"You're such a _dick_." She clutches her hand to her chest.

"Get over yourself, Princess."

Pompous, narcissistic, piece of shit. Thinking he can get her bracelet. He shrugs his jacket on. "You're gonna let the Ark die." For a moment, she sees him flinch. Only a moment.

"Yep."

He's not getting her bracelet. She _refuses_. "Why?" His eyes hone in on hers. For a moment, there's quiet.

"Go float yourself."

_**072\. Omit** _

Clarke stands nose to nose with her mother, anger simmering over.

Azgeda has been biting at Arkadia's heels since the Mount Weather incident. Abigail Griffin sent a recon team: it was well planned, a week long trip. Abby doesn't see the problem.

"You conveniently left out the part where _Bellamy_ was on the mission."

"He could've told you." But he wouldn't, Abby knows. They don't talk. Clarke left for two months after Mount Weather, and only came back when Azgeda became too large of a threat. Abby isn't fond of their bond. Silent and destructive. She quite likes the chasm between them now.

"Well," she says, "he _didn't_."

_**073\. Loath** _

This chick is such a bitch.

To be fair, she hasn't done anything, but she's got a haughty attitude and an upturned nose.

Her hair bounces with each strong step on this stupid mission to save a dead kid. Murphy follows Bellamy's every step, questioning and leery. He's getting that bracelet, even if she whines, even if he has to rip off her arm. She stands for everything he loathes, so her whining would make him grin.

And then: she's falling. He's catching.

He looks in her daring eyes. They both know what she said: the Ark's not going to think she is dead until she is dead.

She could die, right here, right now.

She stands for everything he loathes, and he's waiting for her whining cry. It doesn't come. She stares him dead in the eyes, challenging.

It's not what he expects.

_**074\. Thrall** _

He felt as though he was under the Ark's thrall for 23 years. They're on the ground. He's taking Octavia and they're leaving, first chance they get.

But O doesn't want to go.

(Eventually, he doesn't want to either. The reason has golden hair and forgiving eyes.)

_**075\. Winsome** _

He dreams of her plenty, after she leaves him. Three months of her between Gina's kisses.

He sees her again across a battlefield. He chases her, and he finds her, tied down and tired. She's a girl of sea eyes, ghostly skin and a crown of pink-stained gold for hair. Winsome and kindredly distant.

Moving the hair from her eyes, he tugs the gag from her mouth. _Clarke. Princess._

But the image cracks when she smiles: blood on her lips, dirt between her teeth, death in her eyes. It's a sad smile, barely pulling on her lips.

It seems they can't catch a break, because now, there's a hole in his leg.

_**076\. Purpose** _

Octavia was always his purpose, and then one day—without his knowledge—it shifted.

_**077\. Gruesome** _

Three fingers are broken and he has a gash over his brow.

The landslide came out of nowhere, just like the storm, rumbling clouds and thick drops of rain. He tugs at his feet, squelching them out of the mud.

They were almost back to Arkadia when he suggested the shortcut. Clarke disagreed, but they were running short-

 _Clarke_. "Clarke!"

_**078\. Tangle** _

She can feel the strands tightening and ripping from her scalp.

She hates it. Hates it so completely. Her hair has always been a nuisance, but it used to help her feel pretty. _No one is here to see how pretty you are now._

She doesn't care. Pretty is not her concern.

Madi went berry picking and Clarke just wants to scream. It's day 1,900. The bunker is AWOL and Bellamy isn't here. He's late, or dead, or maybe they just stayed up there, abandoning her.

They don't know she's here. Still.

She grabs her hunting knife, tearing through her locks. The gold is rusty and dry, tough to cut. It takes a half hour, but it gives.

It's been a long time since she felt pretty.

_**079\. Tangible** _

Clarke was the worst kind of tangible.

Right there. She was always _right there,_ just an inch out of reach. Something was always in the way: people, politics, literal _distance_. She's the kind of tangible he wants on the tip of his tongue: burnt sugar and honey. Sun beams in her hair.

The kind of tangible that whispers in your ear, whistling promises, but when you turn around, no one is there.

The kind you _can_ have, but you won't.

_**080\. Fetching** _

"So you're her dog now?" Raven says, sliding out from beneath the rover.

"Shut up, Reyes," he says, pushing his hands into his pockets. He rolls his shoulders. "Do you have it or not?"

She looks at him from the car creeper, calculating as she pushes her palms on the cement floor. Then, her eyes go sad, a sympathetic kind.

"Yeah, I got it."

_**081\. Enormity** _

He's so large compared to her. His stature, his shoulders, his feet, and his hands. Imposing from his smile to his demeanour.

Bellamy takes up space.

Those hands would cover her back completely if they were to splay across her. Those legs, next to her in bed, would stretch far beyond hers. She could settle between his knees without struggle.

His lips are no bigger than hers though.

She may be tiny. More than half a foot shorter than him for example. But for how Bellamy takes up space, Clarke takes up hearts. (His.)

She has a way of squeezing her huge soul into something only five-foot-three-(and-three-quarters).

His hand covers hers, swallowing it in his grasp. Equilibrium.

_**082\. Oxymoron** _

She'll bend herself to go anywhere, into any role. Clarke is stubborn, and is convinced she knows best. She does what she has to. Committing atrocities with a cold stare and crying herself to sleep. She gives her ledger to the earth: it's a stampede. Yet, she is strong willed, and, "you can't" turns into, "watch me."

She does what she has to, not what is right. Clarke is a contradiction. An oxymoron.

Bellamy does not bend. He'll make the world bend. He doesn't fill a role, not on the Ark, not on the ground. He is Bellamy the brother. He has his own agenda. He is in it for him, (and those he loves.) That's the catch, the part that shouldn't exist: he has a heart.

When a man, who's in it for him, falls for a woman, who's in it for everyone but her, the oxymoron writes itself.

(Selfless taker: Clarke. Selfish giver: Bellamy.)

_**083\. Intrude** _

"Didn't mean to intrude," she says, straightening her posture. "Sorry."

She's gone as quick as she was here, startling Bellamy out the mood.

"You'd think the bitch would learn," whoever-the-fuck says above him. Bellamy's teeth grit and he holds back the urge to defend Clarke.

Instead, he says: "yeah," rolling them over. It takes him a minute, but he eventually gets back into it.

_**084\. Cleave** _

Their lips cleave.

They pull away from each other, splitting like a log against an axe. Anger flares and they storm their way around each other.

Their lips cleave.

They fly together quickly, biting and panting. Down their necks, and into their hearts, small and beating.

_**085\. Beam** _

He beams down at the guns, pulling his chapped lips towards his eyes.

He grabs the oily rifle, staining his fingers in orange grease. Turning to look up at her, she sees a childish excitement. The kind in a candy store, or at the sight of a playground. But it's a man, with a gun.

He's psychotic.

She looks a little closer then. It's not the guns. It's the fact that he knows what he's doing when he aims, clicking off the safety. Clarke scans his broad shoulders, tracing the Ark insignia on the back of the guardsman jacket. She realizes he really was a guard once. He's revelling in familiarity, going back to a time when his life was okay, not good, but better.

He looks at her over the weapon, amber gaze melting into the goofiest of grins. _Boyish_. Small. Bellamy is such an imposing kind of man, and she's watching his gates fall down.

He's handsome in a strange way. The off-centre divot in his chin is inviting, and so are his freckles. Freckles she didn't see before.

 _Stop_. He's a dick who shot Wells' father. _Stop_. Why does she want to help him so completely?

"I'm not talking to Jaha."

"What?"

"I can hear you thinking."

She scoffs. He hates her but he knows her. She grabs a rifle as he walks across to set up a sheet. "Ready to be a badass, Clarke?"

It's the way he says her name: soft on the 'r', pushy on the 'c'.

It's the way he smiles like a little boy. It's the way his eyes glow when he looks at his sister. It's the way he didn't drop her and couldn't kill Atom. It's also the way he hung Murphy, and murdered three-hundred-twenty people.

She wants to help him, because—he is not a good man—but he wants to be.

She'll _make_ him talk to Jaha.

_**086\. Eminent** _

"Just do- it." _Snap_. "Shit." Clarke cradles her shoulder as Bellamy stutters.

"You okay? Did I do it right?" She slouches in on herself. _Ow ow ow._ "Clarke?"

"You- did _fine_ ," she says through grinding teeth.

_**087\. Breathtaking** _

Clarke has this habit of taking his breath away. Here are some examples:

-an elbow to the stomach.

-a fist to the stomach .

-when he laughs his guts out after she trips in the creek.

-when she, soaking wet, cuddles a baby bear. "it's a _cub_ ," she corrects.

-making eye contact over the _cub_

-"I thought you weren't supposed to touch _cubs_ , Princess."

-running from a bear together.

-failing to catch his breath in a cave

-she kisses him against the rocks.

Honestly, he is shocked he's still alive, with how little he breathes.

_**088\. Solitude** _

He sits there in the cold gray room, alone. The Ark creeks and whines. The window above him seems to be cracking. There is no oxygen in this room. Her sketches trail the walls, up and down. Evergreen trees to pointy mountains. _Clarke is dead._ He left her behind.

And now he's alone.

He was a man who enjoyed his solitude, and never had any. All he feels now is the empty void of isolation.

_**089\. Present** _

Christmas on the Ark was Bellamy's nightmare. He loved Christmas, but it hurt his heart. O never got to love Christmas and there are only so many candy canes a teenaged boy could fit in his beat up trousers.

On the ground, Christmas isn't going to be a thing.

The day is still of celebration, but Arkadia was considering changing the name, because well, it's a _Christian_ tradition, and the Grounders are far from Christian.

Octavia is disappointed, and in turn she tells Indra, who tells Lexa, who informs Kane that: "that is ridiculous. Culture is to be embraced."

The way they said it was less kind and more Trigedasleng.

And so, they chop down the largest evergreen they can find. Bellamy admires Clarke, Octavia and Lincoln as they try to figure out how to decorate the thing. Clarke suggests they get Grounder and Arkadian children to decorate ornaments.

It happens.

Now, the tree is up, and sparkling in the sunlight. It's Christmas morning, and everyone's 's noses are red. They breathe clouds. Bellamy's leather jacket is a joke against the wind. He sits in the same spot as always, next to Monty and his experimental eggnog. Then, Clarke is next to him, burrowed in a coat. Her lips are chapped and ice clumps on her lashes.

A brown package is clutched in her ruddy fingers.

Not once though, in his 25 years of life, has he received a present larger than a needle, pin, or a plate of food. Today, on the first Christmas Arkadians will spend in the snow, that changed.

A pang hits his chest. He says, "I didn't get you anything."

It never even _occurred_ to him. He's never been able to afford a present, never had close enough friends to _give_ a present either. His mother was rarely home on Christmas and O was content in her sea of candy canes.

But she only smiles through chattering teeth. "Gifts aren't exchanged," she says. "They're given."

(He thinks of giving her a kiss under the mistletoe, but he can't wait that long so he gives her one now.)

_**090\. Autumn** _

Right from the start, the satisfying crunch of those leaves beneath his feet left him with a hunger. Explore. Learn. Conquer. Earth is before him and a hundred teenagers. Fresh, irradiated and new. It's a start.

And later, when Clarke holds those oranging leaves up to his face, he realizes there's a lot more to the world than controlling it.

_**091\. Dance** _

"Oh, stop moping," she says, tugging his sleeves.

The night is dark, humid on his tongue and the sweat stains in his armpits. "I don't like dancing," he says. The violin is sweet, swaying from high to low in a fast paced rhythm that rhymes with his heart.

"You've never danced with me."

Her golden hair is aflame, reflecting the bonfire's kiss. He forgets to argue with her, so distracted by the way the locks swirl around her head as she spins on him.

"Maybe I don't wanna dance with you."

One might be offended, but she lifts a brow in scoff, and without his permission he smirks.

Then, he dances.

_**092\. Religion** _

When he stumbles across a Bible, he doesn't expect himself to read it.

He's a man who loves the words on the page and how they smell, whether that entailed Jesus Christ was irrelevant. He reads the thing, consuming it like the Iliad.

It's a story to him, and he never really considered it could be more to someone else.

Noah's Ark and the tale of Samson were nice, but he wasn't a fan of the idea that a god would ask a man to kill his son. Then again, Zeus wasn't all kind either.

He mentions it to Clarke as they fillet fish on a rock by the river, and at first she's amused that he's read a _Bible_. Then, she starts asking, slitting her knife into the fish's white belly. .

"So Abraham killed his son?"

"Yeah," Bellamy says, washing his knife in the river. "Kane told me it was a 'test of Faith'."

She goes quiet for a moment. "You think you could do it?"

"I don't believe in God," is all Bellamy supplies. She drops her leftover fish into their basket. Sliding the slabs of meat into another.

"Hypothetically."

"I'd go to hell if I failed?" The Old Testament wasn't very forgiving. It was eye for an eye, paying debts. She nods. Take a knife to O? To Clarke? "No."

He'd condemn himself to hell over killing someone he loved. Even if said sacrifice turns into a lamb just before the blade carves its insides, he wouldn't risk it, regardless of God's legitimacy.

_Show you believe in me. Kill your only sister._

"How bout you?" he asks.

Clarke looks far off for a minute. She would. He knows. If she was promised heaven, she would never. If it meant everyone _else_ was promised heaven, if it led her to hell, she would.

"I wanna say no," but she'd be lying.

_**093\. Dull** _

When her pencils press dull, her procrastination kicks in and she doesn't want to sharpen them.

When she draws Bellamy after they left her behind, he looks good in a weird way. He's a man of sharp curves with soft lines, divots in his chin and cheek. His eyes are mean, but the way his brows soften always intrigues her. His freckles stretch with each scowl and smile.

He comes down looking different from the man of her sketches.

His paint splatter of beauty marks disappears beneath patchy hair along with his cleft chin and dimple. Not even his brows are the same. They look at her hard and cold.

The only thing unchanged is his eyes, brown and old and sad.

_**094\. Pattern** _

He traces the patterns on her skin, beneath her thighs and around her boobs.

He makes his own along her skin in trails of hickey, blue and purple, swelling with a sheen of sweat. She moans as his teeth abuse he nipple and then she flips him and repays the favour.

_**095\. Railroad** _

They've been on this path for days, following an endless track. For a while, she tried counting the parallel boards beneath her nimble shoes.

She gave up.

Bellamy is next to her now, steps dragging just as heavily as hers. They are chained by the dead and the beating sun. His lips are chapped and he shifts his backpack from shoulder to shoulder.

They keep walking this railroad. There's nowhere else to go.

Her fingers reach across the mile between them. She clutches his pinky and ring finger.

_**096\. Boot** _

His shoes are far too sweaty, but he's tired, collapsing face first onto his mattress.

Clarke seems to think his exhaustion is the perfect time to bother him. He hears her wander into his room, chattering about a hunting party or two.

"Bellamy?" He grunts. She makes a noise of stifled laughter.

Then he feels her palm on his calf while her crowbarred hands pry his boot off him. His foot cools immediately with the air, and then the other.

The boots clop on the ground.

Her fingers comb through the hair at the base of his neck. "We can talk about it tomorrow," she murmurs, and then her hand retracts.

A burst of energy fills him, and he spins, throwing his hand out to snatch her wrist. She turns to look at him a little startled and he can taste the bitter word: _stay_.

But he lets her go, glancing to his feet. "Thanks," he says quietly. She leaves and he falls apart on his bed, sprawled like a child.

_**097\. War** _

It's who they are.

Shooting guns, and shouting orders. Building walls, and murdering mountains. Massacring armies, and betraying each other. War is who they are and war stole their souls.

The casualty count exponentially grows day by day. It takes her, and then him.

And just like the rest of humanity, they fade into the background because they didn't matter.

_**098\. Sand** _

She stands in the river bank.

The way the graveling sand squishes between her toes, it's both hot and cold. The grains are stained with rushing water that sprays her feet.

Clarke reaches behind her head to undo her braid. The sky is orange and she tries her best to breathe it in. It's okay to relax. She can do this. Her t-shirt pulls over her head. She can.

When she unbuttons her pants, she sees him.

He stands in the river, so still compared to the rough force of the water. Heat blushes her cheek as her hands clutch awkwardly on the loops of her unbuttoned jeans.

His expression is unreadable, stoic like a wall. His skin glistens and she realizes he has crouched himself, a censorship.

_He's naked._

Briefly—and only briefly—her mind flashes to what she imagines his dick looks like. It's probably dark like the rest of him. _Large_ , if his conga-line of girls is any indication.

Water splashes her leg, and she breaks her trance to see him staring her in the eyes.

She steps out of her pants, well aware of the tingle that sprung from the idea of his dick: maybe it's an average length, but _thick_. Would it fit? Her heart clenches with her legs.

She's so stupid, so unbelievably dumb, sinking down into the bank of the river to stare at minnows as they mock her. _He wouldn't want you. (You shouldn't want him.)_

"I haven't cleaned up in half a week," she supplies.

"Not my business." He turns quick, rising from the water: Clarke shouldn't look, really.

But she does, and what she sees is startlingly gorgeous. The plane of his shoulders to the pair dimples in his lower back.

It's the freckles. They map him. They own him, or he owns them, or they coexist. Whatever the semantics, the combination is devastating.

She was already seering between the thighs, but this just makes her throb with fondness. It's not even a turn on.

She wants to touch him, chart him. It's odd. Since the Chancellor pardoned him, he's been different: kinder, guilt-ridden, and sadder in the way he looks after Octavia (everyone). What happened beneath that tree was a mutual vulnerability that should terrify her. It doesn't. She wants to know him, but: _he wouldn't want you. (You shouldn't want him.)_ Clarke has enough decency to rip her eyes away as he rises high enough to see between his legs.

The throb in her legs leaks to her heart, maybe a tiny bit in her stomach.

_**099\. Summer** _

Bellamy Blake always took summer as an invitation to saunter around shirtless.

His skin darkens and his head feels wet with sweaty curls that refuse to tame from June to September. He caught Clarke looking once or twice. To be fair, many people look, much like if Bree was in a crop top. It's the way Clarke looks though, calculating and he's sure there's attraction there. The difference is: when he meets her gaze, she doesn't cower, or even pretend. She smiles or winks jokingly or nods.

Maybe it's heatstroke, but Bellamy Blake is shirtless, and he has a crush.

_**100\. Hero** _

There are no heroes, or even villains.

It's something that's taken Clarke over a century to figure out at this point. People do things, for reasons and sometimes not.

She is not some hero.

..

There are heroes, and villains, to him.

He has been the latter, and he wants to be the former.

Finn shoots a grounder, and then eighteen more, and then Bellamy volunteers for Mount Weather.

He wants to be the hero so badly, but as he watches Clarke, hand trembling atop an unfathomable switch, he can't leave her to pull it. He is not a hero, was never a hero.

Heroes are for little boys and their Greek myths.

..

They sway together, legs intertwined within the prayers for hell to take them.

Clarke has learned to justify every life she stole. She is a bad person. Bellamy has accepted his place as the villain of the story.

They are both wrong.

(Or maybe not. They have good hearts, but they are not good people, soaking in bloody consciences. That's the tragedy.)

_**100 and 1. Counting Bellamy** _

"When they come down..." Madi asks, lying in Clarke's lap. The firepit is warm as her mother trails her fingers through her hair.

Clarke lifts a brow. " _Sha_?"

It's the question Madi's been dying to know the answer to since the Ark Castle stories started: a hundred bad, delinquents were cast aside, and as her mother likes to correct, _a hundred-and-one, counting Bellamy._

It comes in a rush. "Does Bellamy like children?" Madi's knows he does, but…

Clarke's eyes flicker with the flame's reflection, reminiscing. "Loves them," she says. "When he sees a child, he decides they're his kid now."

Madi nearly sighs in relief. Her mother granted her the perfect segue.

"Will I be his kid?" _Will you be together? Will you tell him you love him? Does he feel the same?_ Madi's never known Bellamy, only seen his face in drawings.

She only has her mother's perspective. Clarke seems to struggle with the answer. "He'll love you like you were," she pauses her hands movements, "but no."

Madi's heart shatters: it's been bludgeoned to a pulp.

"But you're my _mom_."

"He's my best friend-"

"-That you wanna _make babies with."_

She glares charmingly at Madi. " _Natblida_ , you're lucky I don't have boys to tease you about." Madi feels a pang and the panic crosses Clarke's face immediately. She used to have boys, friends, and family. They're dead. The apology is coming but Madi doesn't want to hear it.

It is not Clarke's fault, but Clarke likes it when things are her fault.

"I wasn't in _love_ with any of those boys." Clarke smiles shy this time. It is not like she's ever outright said it, but the Bellamy gushing is horrendous. "You should tell him, when he gets here," _or in your next call._ But she won't. Madi knows that.

She hopes Bellamy is easier to persuade. Somehow, Madi can feel the pull between them, and yet she hasn't even met Bellamy Blake, her father to be.

..

Clarke was right. He seems to care for her like a father.

Clarke's family comes down in a beat up cylinder. A tin can. They are late and they look _wrong_. Madi and Clarke watch from behind a bush as the pressure squeals from its container.

They all fall out, looking different but Madi can place each walk. Murphy and Monty cut their hair, and Murphy has a scruff. Emori lost her bandanna. Echo looks kinder. Raven seems unchanged. Harper too. Bellamy looks out of his element, bearded and hair overgrown.

Clarke hasn't moved from next to Madi.

Bellamy dry-heaves, setting his weight on his knees. Murphy starts cackling as Echo makes a jibe at Monty's algae. She then rubs his lower back, murmuring to him. He turns to take in Shallow Valley, unseeing.

It makes sense, when he says, "we gotta make her a grave."

Echo presses a kiss to his lips, and he seems to snap. Grave later: survive now.

Orders fly out, and they're setting up camp so incredibly in sync with one another.

"We have to get in contact with the bunker," Bellamy says to Raven as she situates herself to work on a radio.

All of this, Clarke and Madi watch.

That kiss burns in the back of Madi's head, and she feels utterly out of place, so she can't imagine how Clarke is doing.

 _Maybe tell him when he comes down?_ Her mother used to laugh lightheartedly. Madi doesn't mention it now.

..

"We have to talk to them." Madi knows it's hard. They all look different, love different. They interact like they've been stuck in space with each other for six years. "They think you're dead." _He thinks you're dead._

"We will," Clarke says, "but we should let them settle in."

..

So they don't talk with Spacekru right away.

It takes a few days and Emori caught in a snare. She begins to panic and Clarke— who can't stand someone in pain—cuts her down as nicely as she can.

Murphy comes whipping through the trees, and from sheer reaction, Madi pulls a gun on him.

He's smart as Madi has heard: his hands fly up. "Sup, Hobbit?" He shouts, "hey Bellamy, we got another cockroach!"

It's the first time Madi's heard a voice other than Clarke's in six years. She nearly cries. And she nearly drops her gun to hug him.

Why hasn't Clarke said anything?

"Drop it." _Bellamy_. He points a pistol at her, and she knows he'd never shoot. Then, he clicks the safety off. Clarke slips in front of her. Emori sways uselessly, still not down, but Murphy launches to help.

Bellamy doesn't drop the gun; he doesn't believe Clarke's real.

..

Madi shouldn't be so nervous.

His tent is daunting though, like those ALIE mansions she heard about, and she's a kid he doesn't know.

Her knuckles knock the post, and she hears, "what?" The flap opens and Bellamy seizes up. "Oh- M- I'm sorry, what was your name?"

She feels a little pinch. _You know my name._ It's been a week. They've talked twice. It's more than he's talked to Clarke.

"Madi," she says, "am I interrupting you and Echo?" He shakes his head. This is it:

"Can you tell me a story?" His faces screws and knits, pinching his brows.

She's fourteen, a little old for such things, but she's only heard Clarke's stories. Ones of Greek obsessed janitors who love like puppies, loyal and full. He nods.

They sit by the fire, and he tells her tales of Hesperides.

..

After that, he's much more, (brotherly, fatherly?) friendly. But never when Clarke is around.

Madi sees the sheer pain on her mom's face when Bellamy kisses Echo, or when he won't talk to her passed a few words. Once he emerges from his tent with bruises down his neck Madi can't fathom how he'd get. Murphy cackles.

Clarke looks absolutely shattered, but it seems no one notices but Madi (and Bellamy. Madi notes how his eyes focus on Clarke a little longer than necessary, and there it is:

Those are what Clarke was talking about, sad eyes full of words never said.)

They talk and joke of algae and getting sick and card games. Madi doesn't know what any of it means, and it seems neither does Clarke.

Clarke doesn't seem to notice how Harper explains the jokes or Raven invites her into the conversation either. Madi does, telling her own stories.

She seems to break Clarke's ice when: "She told me all bout you guys. No offense, but Octavia was my favourite." Bellamy's eyes twinkle, and Madi decides to be friends with everyone. She turns to Echo. "Not a lot about you though. She said you were loyal and brave, and cheated at games."

"Madi!" Clarke chastises, but everybody laughs.

"It's all right," Echo says, setting down her bowl. "That's probably the nicest description you could've given me. You saved us, after all."

Clarke goes quiet, staring around the table. _Thank you._ It's in everyone's eyes but Bellamy's, who stares at his feet.

Madi doesn't like that, so she manipulates the situation. "To be fair, Bellamy's description was worse." Madi can feel Clarke's panic. "Asshole king of 'whatever-the-hell-we-want'."

Bellamy's gaze flickers up. Clarke also said he was kind, and warm, and never let her do a hard thing on her own unless she forced him away. He looks hurt. "She mentioned you've killed lots of people too." He doesn't get to look hurt.

Madi glances over at Clarke, whose brow pinches and lips thin. Madi screwed up, clearly. Not even Murphy is jabbing in.

"She said Murphy was funny. Liar." Murphy takes the opportunity she's given.

"You wanna fight hobbit? Bike racks, after school." Madi raises a brow.

Raven smacks him. "She doesn't know what that means dimwit."

Emori laughs, saying, " _I_ don't know what that means."

Clarke pegged Raven, Emori and Murphy. Monty, Echo and Harper do their best to keep their conversation off to the side. She got them right too.

Bellamy is all wrong.

..

He still tells her stories though. Around the fire that night, sitting on a log, she makes amends, or tries to.

"She said you were kind, and overprotective and you liked kids and mythology. She says you crossed a battlefield to save her-"

"-It's fine, Madi." He stokes the flames.

"It's not," she says, "what happened to you?"

He glances up. Then down, and scratches his scruff. No answer, of course.

"Why won't you talk to Clarke?" The fire burns hot tonight.

"Madi-" she knows that tone, heard it from Clarke.

"-she missed you. She talked about you so much." _She loved you_ , it's not her confession to make though.

"We weren't as close as she made it seem." He shrugs, but he's a terrible actor. Liar. He's such a liar, an emotionally handicapped liar.

There's one confession she can make. "Do you have any idea how much she cares about you?"

"Madi. Clarke and I are friends-"

"-when you were on the Ring," Madi pushes off her log. She kneels before him in desperation, beating her hand into the dirt, "she called you on the radio every day for six years."

His face goes blank, and Madi remembers Clarke saying he wore his heart on his sleeve. It's a different man. _What happened to you?_

"Clarke died-" he says, swallowing. She was dead for six years, to him. "Do you want a story or not?" She shakes her head. She doesn't want one from him.

At this rate, Clarke will never stop talking to a ghost.

..

They wake up late a few mornings later, in their overheated tent. Madi lights a few candles Harper made them. She hears a knock on their post, and Clarke opens the flap with her foot.

It's Bellamy.

"You missed breakfast," he says, holding two bowls.

"I- thank you," Clarke answers, taking the bowls. He nods, and after a moment, he leaves. The flap sways back into place.

Immediately, Clarke seems to glow, because Bellamy brought them food. It must mean _this_ , or _that_ , and things are getting _better_.

It worries Madi.

..

He brings them a chess board, one he made.

Clarke invites him in to play, and he politely declines, saying, "I'm not done the pieces, but I wanted to make sure you liked it."

Seems reasonable, but Clarke raises a brow. "We can help."

Madi sees his shoulders relax. She didn't even know they were tense, but Clarke did. Then, he watches Clarke as she designs each piece from the floor. He sits next to her, and Madi across. When he labels them, Madi realizes what Clarke already knew.

"Four horses?"

"Knights," Madi corrects.

A beat, then, "right," and, "these too."

"Rooks," Madi emphasizes, "and these are bishops."

Clarke labels the pieces, and writes down what they do and how many they need. Bellamy glances at her, flustered. She slides him the paper, and Madi watches their fingers brush.

She swears the exchange of pages burst into flames. He seems to hesitate. "On the Ring," he says, "I found Wells' board."

Clarke freezes from her furs on the floor. _Wells was her best friend,_ Madi remembers. She grew up with him.

"I left it up there," he adds, "if I had known, I could've-"

"-but you didn't know." He nods again. He is incredibly awkward when it comes to emotional talks. He says poignant things while he is stiff as a tree. Madi remembers Clarke saying they fell apart in each other.

Maybe it's because Madi is here.

"I'll have them done in a week."

He stands. Clarke says, as though desperate to keep the conversation flowing, "I didn't know you could carve."

He looks at her, then Madi, swallowing and taking a step away. "Echo taught me." He's gone. The tent is too big, filling with a low glow of candle.

Clarke says, "what a liar." Madi giggles.

..

Madi takes her leave during chess games, claiming he was far too slow a learner to wait on. In fact, he's remarkably tactical, in a passionate sort of way.

He doesn't sacrifice his queen for anything, grimacing as even a pawn is knocked down. He always loses, because of this fact, too hesitantly impulsive.

Clarke makes every sacrifice required.

Madi likes speed chess.

So she leaves when they decide to stop using their words, glaring and taking five minutes between each turn. She hangs out with Murphy instead, who seems to be in a limbo.

Madi is bad at love advice, too blunt as Clarke says, tending to make things worse.

He's in love with Emori, but Madi mentions maybe there's something untouched and simmering with Raven. He looks at her.

Over the table, he asks if Madi's noticed Raven's limp. "That was me."

"I know," Madi says, "but you know how many times Clarke and Bellamy hurt the other?"

He glances at her. "I don't think I could do it."

Because of what he did, he'll never unsee the way she limps every step. He can't face that, and he cares, maybe even loves Emori.

"That's fair." What does Madi know anyway? "You're a fun uncle," he grins, "but Clarke never told me about a Murphy who cared."

"She never knew him," is all he says, savouring the berries he plops in his mouth. "She was always off saving the goddamn world."

Madi quite likes Murphy. He's an ass, but he doesn't hide it.

..

Raven and Monty try to get in contact with the bunker, and what they plan is kind of dangerous but it's all they've got.

Make a bomb. Blow a hole in it.

That's what they do, some hydrazine mix.

Madi meets Octavia and they all come out of the bunker more than a little crazy. Grandma has a drug addiction. Auntie O, as Madi liked to call her in her head, is more than unstable.

But Wonkru rises and they fill up Shallow Valley. Madi's home has more than two.

..

"How are things with Bellamy?"

Clarke looks up from her own sketchbook. "Fine. He nearly beat me."

"You should-"

"Madi." That's not a good tone. "Stop tampering in everyone's lives. Let things happen."

Madi wants to argue. Last time Clarke 'let things happen', she was left behind for six years.

..

Madi doesn't listen to her mother.

"Do you love Clarke?" she asks Bellamy.

Octavia sits down next to them, shaky and hurting. But she gives a tired smile. "Yes."

" _No_ ," he answers.

 _Don't meddle. Don't meddle._ "Clarke loves you." She is meddling. He doesn't say anything, seizing up. He leaves. His eyes flicker at his sister.

"You got guts," Octavia says, "he's been running from that for years."

Madi feels a little sick.

..

Bellamy doesn't show up for chess, and Clarke looks worried, scarily worried, wondering what she has done wrong and that's what does it: Madi cracks. "I told him you loved him." It's rushed and mixed with an _I'm sorry._

Clarke looks at her, and pinches her nose between her fingers. "Madi…" she seems mad. "I need some air, okay?"

Her 'some air' turns into her not coming back, and Madi pokes her head out to the nightly fire pit. It's surrounded by Spacekru and Wonkru. Everyone chatting in English and Trigedasleng.

Clarke sits beside Bellamy, and they seem to be arguing quietly.

He stands. She stands. Madi follows, trailing behind. They march around camp, stopping in front of his tent, the mansion turned shed.

"Is what Madi said true, or not?" He yelps a little loudly, a little scared, crossing his arms. Heart on his sleeve.

Clarke is still. "Yes."

Once again, shoulders Madi hadn't known were tangled loosen. Her chest squeezes like a fist, ribs pressing into her lungs.

Heart on his sleeve, (when he's with Clarke). He is a dam, about to collapse.

"You were dead," he says, "I thought I killed you, lost you. Do you have any idea what that feels like?" Madi figures it out. He's scared, and lonely and he's tired of losing people.

Clarke crosses her arms too, toeing her boots into the dirt. "Yes."

"What?" He takes a step back.

"You were late." Madi remembers when five years hit, and they didn't come down. Clarke was frantic, lying to herself. Did she fail to adjust the radio tower? Did the algae farm backfire? His eyes soften, and Madi finally sees it. _Bellamy_.

"She told me about the radio calls." Madi winces. Clarke scoffs.

"Of course she did."

He drops his arms. "I'm with Echo." Madi wants to scream, "but I loved you too- six years ago." _I'm not ready. Not ready at all._

"We're friends, Bellamy, partners, co-leading _murderers_." Clarke gives him a shaky smile. "I don't know how I love you, but I have, for a while." _I miss you._

Madi sees something broken, and something she can't fix.

So she lets it go. She lets it happen, because sometimes, even people who loved each other as much as they did, can't work passed their issues.

All she did was snap a bow that was drawn to full capacity. All she wanted was a father who'd tell her bedtime stories.

..

She gets a Bellamy, and he tells her stories. He's a different man than he used to be. Not better or worse. But he's here.

Madi grows to quite like Echo, her loyalty, and her startling beauty. Echo grows to quite like herself, and after a year on the ground, her and Bellamy split. Mutual as they both claim.

Everyone is waiting on him and Clarke it seems.

Madi has learned her lesson though. She's fifteen and a nice boy named Aden smiled at her the other day. It's a cliché little crush, but someone has to give in to a crush if her mother won't.

Bellamy and Clarke don't happen.

He comes for chess, and he beats Clarke a quarter of the time. He isn't fond of Madi's speed chess. It overwhelms and frustrates him.

Octavia is, and they spend a day having a little tournament.

Octavia learns as fast as Bellamy had and is clearly as competitive. The sister does her best to reign it in, because she's on a quest for her brother to understand her (love her).

Madi and Octavia should've known, teaming up against Bellamy and Clarke was a _horrible_ idea.

"You _cheated_ ," Madi yelps, watching mouth agape as Clarke says checkmate.

Octavia's brow twitches and Bellamy smirks at Clarke teasingly. Madi is so tired of those stupid puppy eyes. _Kiss her, love her, make me a brother._ It nearly brings tears to her eyes.

Octavia pokes her, side-eyeing her brother. "Don't get your hopes up," she whispers.

"They aren't," Madi sighs.

..

Bellamy and Madi are hanging out when Clarke disappears. They get back at dark, and that's when they find out.

He loses his mind.

Madi is nearing sixteen and she's lost another mother.

..

When they find her, (or when she finds them), it's chaos.

She crawls her way back to camp, ankle horribly twisted. Bellamy picks her up, and carries her to Grandma's. Then, he holds vigil next to her, with Madi. The tent is small and hurt.

Abby nurses her ankle, giving Bellamy these broken looks.

And when Clarke wakes up, well he gets mad at her. _How could you worry me like that (again)_ and _I love you (I don't know how, but I do)._

Madi does a double take. Clarke stares at him, and he collapses into his folded arms on the side of her bed. He loves her. He is scared to lose her. He is lonely. He does not know what to do. He is traumatized.

He is tired.

Clarke says nothing, just threads her fingers into his only hair.

His heart is on his sleeve. Clarke's is in his hands.

..

Years pass, and letting it happen seems to work.

She's glad for it. She's glad they got their start happily, not roiling in trauma, and marinating in their sins. They smiled more, in this last year, by themselves and together. Peace, and choice, and dreadful freedom you don't know how to waste.

Madi finds out over a story, because of course that's how Bellamy would tell her.

"Want one of Clarke," he asks, over the fire. She is seventeen, far too old for this kind of thing, but she loves it.

She nods. The fire flickers.

He sucks in a breath. Then in a flustered rush: "Nine years after Bellamy met Clarke, she kisses him over a chessboard." Madi's eyes widen, no way. Then, in an attempt to ignore the topic, he continues, "did Clarke ever give you the talk?"

"You did _that!_ On the chessboard!" His face scrunches.

"Not _on_ the chessboard."

Madi stares at him, and he starts laughing. And Madi realizes he is happier, and it's not just because _Clarke kissed and had sex with him._ It's because they're in peacetime and he's taking care of himself again.

His beard is gone, his hair is short. He's old now, breaching thirty-two. He's known Clarke nearly a decade. They got there on their own, and it took a hell of a long time. Clarke was so _happy_ this morning too. Madi scowls.

"What?" He asks, weary. Madi laughs.

"Murphy owes me a latrine shift." Yep, they made bets. Madi thought it would never happen. Bellamy raises a brow.

She adds, "I'd say 'welcome to the family', but you were here first."

When Madi inevitably outgrew her fear of Clarke, the blonde, strong woman became a mother to her. It's always been Clarke and Madi, and every time, Clarke would remind her to _count Bellamy._

"Shut up, Madi."

"Murphy told me you had a daddy kink," he stands abruptly, disturbing the fire.

"Nope." He shakes his head.

"-but like, _you_ call _Clarke_ daddy." His jaw drops and he spins on his heel.

"Nope," he calls over his shoulder, and Madi notices how he turns towards her and Clarke's cabin. It makes her giddy.

What can she say? She's a meddler.

..

.

_**~fin** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These prompts were supposed to be short. Fight me lmao.
> 
> (Bellarke with the reverse daddy kink joke: my sister said it to me and I died. She's like, "he looks like a sub who'd call her daddy... if they EVER got together." Mood.)
> 
> Btw, views on religion are not necessarily mine: it's how I believe the characters would interpret it. Though I do apologize for biblical inaccuracies.
> 
> Have a nice day you whore, lol jk

**Author's Note:**

> *casually writes a rushed little story, stretching the prompts* *side eye* shhh
> 
> <3 thx for reading


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